I read with interest a short note in ars about how Intel is hard at work porting Android 3.0, or Honeycomb, to x86. While this immediately made me think of x86 powered smartphones, I started to think, well, what can’t you do on a smartphone (or perhaps more appropriate a tablet) that you can on a Wintel box? There are a few things (like graphic-intensive first person shooters) but not a huge number, I think.
And this led to me thinking about Chromium OS and, of course, the prototype Cr-48 that made the rounds late last year, most famously for its fraction-of-a-minute boot times and its usability, while I wait, patiently, as my sad little PC huffs and puffs along for several minutes before showing any signs of life.
Which in turn made me think of a post I wrote back in 2008, where I questioned the assertion that many had made back then about the release of Chrome (the browser, that is) by Google as a “Windows killer” and very much agreed with The Register’s take on it (hint, the story was called: Chrome-fed Googasm bares tech pundit futility, and subtitled: It’s a f***king web browser). And just to be clear, this was before Chromium OS was a twinkle in Google’s eye.
And in that post, I was so bold as to state that Microsoft probably didn’t have much to worry about.
I imagine it should suffice to say that I don’t quite feel the same way these days….
Most of you probably already have heard that Google has officially announced its new browser, Chrome, which will be released to the public (in beta form) later today. It is an open source project that has a very, very interesting set of features that enhance security, privacy, speed and stability, including multiprocessing architecture.
You can read more about the features in the comic that Google has published to walk you through it. What a great approach. Wikipedia also has a bit of a compressed summary of the new features as well, which is a bit quicker to get through than the comic.
Will be very interesting to see how this browser does. I imagine it likely will be quite good, given most of the stuff that Google has offered. That being said, I was a bit concerned as to what this meant for Mozilla, whose existence (or at least revenue) I understand depends significantly on its relationship with Google, which is now, effectively, a competitor of sorts. Mozilla’s CEO has already posted his reactions to Chrome. Whether or not it turns out to be a good thing or bad thing remains to be seen – there are already a few folks who have alluded to the possibility of a Google “monopoly” and/or anti-competitive behaviour through Chrome. IMHO I think that’s rather unlikely.
At the end of the day, though, I think this will only serve to enhance the choices people have, browser wise, and improve things all around. Though I’m hoping it will not lead to the demise of Mozilla. I like Mozilla. And of course Firefox.
Update: Alas several hours later no Chrome love for yours truly. If you haven’t given it a shot by all means do so and let me know if you get through. I imagine that’s what happen when a billion or so people try to download the same thing, notwithstanding Google’s massive pipes and data centres. (see below) Also, saw a great story in The Register, that poked a bit of fun at Google. A little sample that, coincidentally, fits right in with the law-related theme of this blog:
Further update: Seems I had a bad link. Tried again (googled) and was able to download from a different URL. Very easily, actually. But, alas, apparently need to close the browser I’m using to install…
Further further update: Installed and running. So far, so good. Rather bare bones but impressive memory footprint, and very snappy, both on launch and, well, pretty well everything else. A very simple and straightforward approach that doesn’t have a million options, choices and tweaks, or nifty integrations (a la Flock). Miss my plugins though. And not surprising there don’t appear to be any for Chrome right now, at least AFAIK.
Another update: Works well but does not play well with Facebook – some links/features just don’t work.
A nice summary of the 2006 e-comm lititation in the E-Commerce Times. Not surprisingly, they call 2006 the “Year of the Tech Patent Lawsuits”. An excerpt on one of my favourites:
For better or worse, patent attorneys can thank the NTP v. Research In Motion case for introducing the word ‘patent troll’ into the general lexicon and more fundamentally, highlighting how easy it is for an upstart to challenge an established company. In short, it made patent law sexy.
This and many other recent cases in with which an e-commerce patent has been challenged by a small company has led to a steady call for reform by the software industry, he said.
“At every opportunity, today’s software market-leaders have called for reductions in the power of patents, increases in the difficulty of obtaining patents, and an enforcement bias toward companies that practice the patent.
Some see the proposed reforms as improving ‘patent quality’ while others see them as a way to squeeze out upstart competitors,” he explained
Wow. I never thought I’d live to see the words “patent law” and “sexy” used in the same sentence, much less using the latter to describe the former. I’ve already ruminated about this topic previously so will keep this one short. Links to the articles below.
Apple could position the move as “Dell is so cool, we had to do a deal with them.” Underlying that is “Let’s face facts, with the exception of a pretty case, and a couple of hardware features, we’re an Intel box all the same.” (I know I’m going to get foaming rabid Mac owners that say the bits under the hood of their machines are especially selected by Zen Master Craftsmen and assembled by virgins in a far off land with blessed incense burning on a 24×7 basis, but it just ain’t so).
What has Apple got to lose? Zero.
I certainly would be interested in seeing Apple do this. On the other hand, I don’t know if it would come at “zero” cost. As their user base increases, so do the variations of hardware that people will want to use, and the drivers, and the third party software and, before you know it, you’re starting to make compromises here and there to let everything work. Then as more users come on board it starts becoming more of a target for hackers, who then start working feverishly to craft attacks, trojans and viruses, then leading your users to suggest that your platform is inherently security-deficient, requiring further investment in updates, patches, etc. Then of course you get on MS’ radar, who also produces a rather important office productivity app for OSX and may not take too kindly to Apple trying once again to eat its lunch.
I don’t know. I just don’t see it happening. OSX is nice and all, but to my simple mind, there is, and has been, a viable alternative to Microsoft operating systems for quite some time – replete with easy installation, cool features, nice interfaces, good security, and even relatively broad hardware compability – its called Linux and its free. And unlike the old Slackware days, Ubuntu (along with several other variations), is pretty easy to install and configure. But even with all this, where’s Linux on the desktop? Yes, its certainly being used, but has it made more than a few percentage points dent on MS market share? No. Why? Inertia. Windows has the biggest installed base, therefore the biggest possible customer base, so developer develop for Windows and put less effort into others (with of course some exceptions). Therefore more apps for Windows. And users don’t pick an OS because they like it – they pick it because of the apps they can run on it. So they continue to buy Windows. Not because its that much better than Linux, or OSX, but because they have MS Office, Adobe Acrobat, Photoshop, Premiere, SAS, Mathematica, Cubase, AutoCAD, etc. etc. etc. all at their disposal. Sure, there are some nice apps for Linux and of course OSX – but certainly nowhere near the depth or breadth of Windows apps.
Given this, why the heck would Apple bother trying where Linux (which has a nicer price point) hasn’t (yet) succeeded? I guess we’ll see. It would be neat to see how far they get. But I ain’t holding my breath.
Read a very interesting article on the weekend on how Yahoo! blew it. No, they’re not really a search engine, or rather weren’t really a search engine, but thought I’d mention it given my previous musings on search engines. The article, I think, demonstrates pretty clearly how quickly things can change in the online world, and how the balance of economic power can very quickly change so that the one puny underdog can become the king of the junkyard, so to speak. Not that Yahoo! is exactly the picture of abject failure. But, relative to Google, they certainly have some catching up to do. And if Google isn’t very, very, very careful, they may very well be in the same position a few years from now – struggling to catch up with the brash young upstart that has come up with the Next Big Thing…
Interesting post on the Wellington Financial blog. In short, sounds like they think the success of a new vc financed search engine hakia is unlikely to be around very long. An excerpt.
But it really isn’t clear why the rest of us will rip out the Google toolbars or Yahoo Finance pages and convert to another aggregator. Well, maybe we could stand t dump Yahoo Finance.
Youtube, flickr and the like were serving a need. There’s no obvious need for a better search engine. And if there is, Google has proven that they have a few billion to invest on improvements and the currency to acquire along the way.
imho the better question would be why not? changing a search engine is about as hard as changing your undies – either type it in or change your homepage. why even bother with a toolbar? no idea about hakia but i do remember yahoo, altavista, hotbot and a couple of other engines that were at one time or another at the top of the heap.
relatively speaking, in terms of switching costs from the user perspective a search engine isn’t close to most other things (e.g. operating system, office applications, etc.).
and sure, google has lots of coin. but at one point it didn’t. and there wasn’t exactly an absence of search engines when they popped up…
will it be a success? no idea. could it? why not? I’d certainly use it if it’s better than google.
BTW, in case someone from WF is reading this here, tried leaving a comment, couldn’t as your captcha doesn’t seem to be working and PS you might want to try hashcash instead.
